


Given

by magikfanfic



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Batfamily Feels, Gen, vague mentions of depression and blood and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 02:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11244741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: Batfamily on Father's Day.





	Given

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first foray into Batfamily fic, but I wanted to write something for Father's Day and this is what happened. Also, I know that I left out Duke as well as the girls. As much as I would have liked to include them, I just didn't have the best sense of all of them for Bruce to ponder over, which is why it only features the characters that it does.

Dick just appears, as he always does, cajoling his way through locked doors and windows as easily and soundlessly as always with a smile and a flick of his wrist and just all the light in his soul. The world has not been kind to Dick Grayson, but it never soils him the way that it does others. If anything, all the hardships just make him better, and Bruce likes that about him, has always considered it his first protege’s greatest strength and ultimate weakness.

Of the lot of them, Dick is the only one who is actually good with people. Not just the myriad ever-shifting flock of superheroes and the ones who linger in the gray in-between places, not for hire but just sometimes with their own agenda, but all people, every person. Bruce has never truly seen anyone dislike him. Sometimes Dick can annoy people, get under their skin, rub them the wrong way with his smiles and all of his talk, but no one really seems to have a bad word to say about him. Nothing that cannot be brushed away as just a human foible, just a normal thing. Dick is infinitely likable, as kind as he is charming, flirtatious and polite and witty. And silk when he moves thanks to years spent under the tutelage of his parents. Bruce could never have taught that because Bruce can’t even move like that. His body isn’t built for it. Dick moves on instinct, flowing from one graceful leap and bound to the next while Bruce plans out every motion and makes sure that each one counts, doesn’t waste any energy.

Dick, on the other hand, will just do things for show because he can and because his stamina seems never ending. The things that a childhood spent in a circus will teach you. The things that an adolescence spent swinging from rooftops in embarrassingly short shorts will continue to teach you. But the thing that Dick has never needed to be taught, the thing that sometimes gets him in trouble with Bruce, is how to be himself. There has never been an instant of wavering there. Dick Grayson will never be anyone but Dick Grayson no matter what mask he wears, no matter what name he swings through the streets with.

Today, though, he is just Dick, sitting at the table, legs crossed, cheerfully prattling away to Alfred and trying to engage Bruce in conversation at every turn, though he knows that it is hit or miss, that Bruce will answer when he wants to and just listen most of the time. That’s okay. They got to the point where that was okay for both of them years ago. Dick might sometimes still feel the sting of inadequacy, but he knows that it comes from himself and not from Bruce. Bruce who always knew he could be better, that he would be better. Better even than himself. Which is what he wants, after all, though he does sometimes wish Dick would let the hero life go, let it slip through his hands like rope, take up something else. Out of all of them, Dick is the one who could have a life. Dick could settle down. Dick could get married and have children. He would be a good father, Bruce knows. Though he thinks that has less to do with Dick having him as an example growing up and more to do with him having Alfred and just who he is as a person.

But Dick will never leave the spotlight. He was born into it, and it is inside of his veins, pumping constantly. Dick could have anything, everything, he wanted, but this is what he will have. And Bruce has to deal with that, has to reflect on it and move along with it because nothing he says will change the mind of this man who always looks like a boy when he catches his eyes. Bruce can never shake the image of the forgotten child in the spotlight and the crumbled bodies of his parents. Not even when Dick smiles, as he does so often, not even when he laughs, not even when he proved that pain can make a person kind just as easily as vengeful. They soothe their pain in different ways. Bruce puts himself in harm’s way, cannot fathom a life without pain, without allowing himself to be the shield between the evil in the city and the city. While Dick soars and jumps and smiles and teases, quips, avoids blows, and then picks himself back up, still grinning, when he falls.

Dick is forgiveness, and Bruce doesn’t completely understand him even for having raised him. Somewhat raised him. As much as Bruce can raise anyone when he still feels like he has so much growing up to do. Stunted inside, paused somewhere in his emotional development, but not Dick. And he is glad of this because, out of all of them, one of them should be whole. It is a kind of victory to look in the eyes of his bright bird son and see hope as much as pain.

Tim shows up in the evening, comes in through the door like an actual human, though he stands a little too straight and too much to the side. For once he isn’t huddled under a stack of files or concerns. There isn’t a case hovering over his head. He doesn’t need to spend ten hours going back and forth with Bruce about whatever conspiracy he’s investigating now.

It’s just Tim in slacks and a sweater a little too big for him with his eyes fever bright as always because nothing stops the fires inside of him from burning. Tim suggests they play chess, and they sit in silence for hours going through one game after another, the tally so close that it’s hard to tell who has won more. Out of all of them, Tim has the mind that spins, gears that never stop, and eyes that see everything in front of them. No one can figure something out like Tim can. There are secrets that Tim learned before Bruce did, and this could seem like a failure, but it doesn’t. It explodes in his heart like a firework.

In some ways, Tim is the least his out of all of them. Tim has his own tragedies, but that is what he considers them: his tragedies. There is not the same sense of responsibility there even if there is just as much care. Bruce would like to see Tim put his mind to better use, make a difference in the world without a costume. He could do it. If Dick could fade out and live a normal life, then Tim is the one who could step back and live an impactful life in politics or law or something else equally as big.

Tim could change the world, and Bruce would love to see the world he would create because it would be better. Better than all of this, better than this long romp through the darkness that they lie and pretend is a life. Out of all of them, Bruce thinks that Tim is the one with an endgame. He cannot stop because his heart will always be bleeding, and Dick knows nothing else, would wither and be blown away without it, but Tim. Tim just needs a purpose, a reason to step away, and Bruce has tried, tries at least once a year to help him find one.

He would worry about running out of time, but Tim is careful. Bruce is the least concerned for Tim’s well-being because he trusts that Tim is the most concerned for his own well-being. Nothing is going to happen to him because he will not let it, and if anyone has enough will and enough intelligence to control the world around them, it is Tim.

In the end, Tim wins more games than Bruce and takes his leave carrying out a stack of case files that Bruce considers cold but that his whip-smart bird wants to take another look at, figured out everything inside of those pages, suss out the details that have been alluding him. Bruce looks forward to hearing about what he finds, hopes that Tim will take the time to share because he doesn’t always, and Bruce would like to be able to help him more but neither of them knows how to make that move. Maybe that, too, will come in time.

Damian darts in and out all day, a small shadow in jeans and a hoodie with a judgemental clicking tongue, arms crossed over his chest in derision as he regards Bruce with the others as they come. It is not until dinner that he finally sits, though he sighs as if the world ending would be better than making their way through yet another meal. As far as Damian is concerned, he would probably be happier stopping an armageddon than eating.

Bruce has ceased trying to make Damian give up what he is, what he was made to be, though he doesn’t like it, not one bit. He should be able to draw a line in the sand and make him behave, make him step back and just be a child, but he can’t. Damian thwarts him at every move. In some ways, he is like Dick that way only not. Dick thrills at every adventure, loves every jump. Damian is bored with anything that does not put his life on the line and remains bored with quite a few situations that do.

Truth be told, Damian is far too much like Bruce, and this terrifies him the most, this is why he encourages Damian to spend time with Dick, in the hope that some of Dick’s joy and kindness and energy will rub off on Damian. The youngest bird is still impressionable, after all. Maybe everything does not have to be darkness for him. Maybe everything does not have to be despair and death and the League and knives and just boredom with the world. Bruce has felt that, that unshakable numbness, that feeling that nothing makes any impact at all. It still rests at the back of his mind, just a step away. He would save Damian from that if he could, but he worries that there are too much alike and that his son will want nothing but that as well.

Once dinner is done, Damian wants to train, but Bruce manages to talk him into the media room to watch IP Man, which Damian clicks his tongue and sneers at until Donnie Yen’s hands fly so fast that not even the League trained boy can keep up and then he watches, rapt and intrigued. He falls asleep before the movie ends, and Bruce carries him to bed. For once, he is not bruised. For once, he is not injured and fighting. For once, he is almost a child, and Bruce drinks in every moment of it.

He does not think Jason will come.

He does not expect Jason to come.

His burned bird has the most reasons to stay away, and Bruce would not blame him for doing so.

But he does. At 11:58 pm on the dot, he knocks on the glass door of the library balcony, the wind in his hair, eyes blank and staring, mouth a line, and Bruce can always see the scars. Bruce can always smell charred flesh and burned hair. Jason is hard to look at because all he sees is a broken body and a child he failed. All he sees is an explosion lancing into the sky.

But Jason has never known how to stop his entire life. He has always taken things to their ultimate limit and beyond. He lives his life at one hundred and cannot slow down for anyone. Not even for Bruce. Not even for death.

Yet he pauses at the door for two minutes. They stare at each other, neither of them moving except for the way that one side of Jason’s mouth quirks up and then down and then up and then down again like it cannot decide how to feel even now.

Bruce has a lot of things he would like to say to Jason, but they get tangled when he tries to speak so he decides not to. Not tonight. He is not going to ruin it. Instead, he stands there, hands in his pockets, eyes fond, smiling just a little, just enough to let Jason know it’s okay, they’re okay in this moment, this is enough for both of them.

Two minutes has never seemed so short or so long. Bruce blinks, and Jason disappears. He thinks the smell of smoke lingers after him. One day he will be able to do more for his broken bird but that day is not today. That time is not now.

There is the sound of a throat clearing behind him, and he turns to face Alfred. “A fine Father’s Day wouldn’t you say, Master Bruce?”

“I would, Alfred. I would indeed,” he says as he starts to the door but not before glancing over his shoulder where he can see that someone has drawn a smiley face on the window either as a greeting or a parting. Either way, Bruce counts this as one of the good days. There are so few of those in Gotham and fewer still for the Batman. He will take as many of them as are given.


End file.
